Hey All!First. It is cold as hell out there! Yes, it is 30 degrees out side and this is when I decide to enlist my youngest son Michael to help me finally help me hang two small upper cabinets for storage. Since we were able to do most of the work from inside the can, it was not too bad for a while.

What I did.I decided to to use 2X4s as french cleats, cutting them approximately in half. OK, I committed a sin, I did not do much measuring I just kind of eyeballed it as to cutting the 2X4s in half. Why I felt I needed a picture of this, I do not know, but that is what the following picture is. I put a smaller scrap piece on the saw for setup.

A second full 2X4 of the same length was attached to the bottom of the cabinet to of course keep the top and bottom evenly spaced off the wall. Yes, I know it is a little blurry and out of focus, but damn! You try using your cell phone to take pictures when it is 30 degrees out side.

Of course the top board on the back of the cabinet is the top half of the french cleat.

We attached the two 2X4s to the back of the two cabinets. Then, I simply held the cabinet against the wall and just told my son when it was at the height I wanted it. At which time I had him draw a line under the cabinet to mark the location of the bottom. With the cabinet on the bench, we held the second half of the french cleat in place and measured from the bottom of the cabinet to the middle of the bottom cleat. In other words, the top and bottom of the cleats had a small area (about 3/4 inch wide) that was the mounting surface. I guess I should of taken a picture of that to explain it better.

Then we measured from the bottom line on the wall to the same distance we had measured on the cabinet. Using a level as a straight edge, we put a level line on the wall of the can.

The 2X4s were cut to a length that spanned two of the raised wall areas. Then we simply drilled through the wall in the approximate center of each raised area of the wall.

Since my son is younger, it was easier to put him on the roof to hang over and run the screws through the holes we drilled as I held the bottom half of the french cleat to the wall inside the can.

As you can see in the picture the screws formed a nice seal against the outside of the can once they were snugged up.

Once all was said and done, this is what at least one of the cabinets looked like once hung.

Mind you, these were recycled small upper cabinets and I wish I had some bigger ones, but this all served me well and proved that I at least now had a proven method to secure or mount things to the walls if needed.

Next will be mounting some cleats to the walls to use for mounting other things to the walls.

BTW….I know I was planing on putting up plywood or something else in order to put insulation in. But it came down to a money thing and just needing some extra storage now, not later. It is all an ever changing project and this has now shown that I can effectively attach wood to the walls of the can.

If you have any questions or comments. As usual they are always welcome and I will answer any questions as soon as possible.

If you lessen the angle on your cleats you’ll gain square inchage to fasten to the wall/cabinet. You really only need about a 7 degree angle to hold things to the wall when they have some weight on them. Now don’t try and hang a workbench from the wall with that, but for most things like cabinets. Keep it going!